National Cheesecake Day

Here's your nightly math! Just 5 quick minutes of number fun for kids and parents at home. Read a cool fun fact, followed by math riddles at different levels so everyone can jump in. Your kids will love you for it.

National Cheesecake Day

It’s National Cheesecake Day, when we celebrate one of the yummiest — and most fattening — desserts out there: one tasty piece has almost 1/2 the fat a grown-up should eat in a day. Cheesecake can be very simple to make: you just whip together cream cheese, eggs, and sugar. But you can make it a lot fancier than that. You can give it a crust of graham cracker crumbs or chocolate cookie crumbs, or go thicker with a layer of sponge cake or brownie. You can top it with cherries, strawberries or raspberries. You can marble it with fudge or peanut butter or toffee, or give it flavors like pumpkin or key lime. Maybe there are lots of flavors because cheesecake has been around forever: the first recipe was written by a doctor in ancient Greece about 2,300 years ago. Now in 2014 we’re still enjoying this awesome dessert, so if you’re thinking about baking one yourself, today is the day…just make sure you share it with someone.

Wee ones: If your cheesecake needs just cream cheese, eggs, sugar and vanilla, how many ingredients is that?

Little kids: If you’re taste-testing cheesecakes and you taste the strawberry one, then cherry, then peanut butter cup, then fudge marble, then start over with strawberry, what’s the 9th bite of cheesecake you take? Bonus: If you can eat for 10 minutes straight before you’re so full you might explode, and you start eating at 2:30 pm, at what time do you just have to stop?

Big kids: If you’re taste-testing those cheesecakes and you taste the strawberry one, then cherry, then peanut butter cup, then fudge marble, on which bite do you taste cherry for the 12th time? Bonus: If your own cheesecake recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of sugar for every 6 tablespoons of cream cheese, how many tablespoons of sugar do you need for 3 cups of cream cheese? (Reminder: 1 cup has 16 tablespoons).

Answers:Wee ones: 4 ingredients.

Little kids: Strawberry. Bonus: At 2:40 pm.

Big kids: On the 46th bite, since you will have finished 11 full rounds (44 bites) and also have taken another bite of strawberry. Bonus: 8 tablespoons (1/2 cup, which is 1/6 of 3 cups…another way to solve it).

About the Author

Laura Bilodeau Overdeck is founder and president of Bedtime Math Foundation. Her goal is to make math as playful for kids as it was for her when she was a child. Her mom had Laura baking before she could walk, and her dad had her using power tools at a very unsafe age, measuring lengths, widths and angles in the process. Armed with this early love of numbers, Laura went on to get a BA in astrophysics from Princeton University, and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business; she continues to star-gaze today. Laura’s other interests include her three lively children, chocolate, extreme vehicles, and Lego Mindstorms.